Little and Often: Lilydale

These photos are from a couple of weeks ago now. The dying embers of a beautiful sunny evening. As usual, I was in Kirkby Lonsdale for the boys Rugby practice on a Wednesday, and went for a wander along the Lune…

…past Ruskin’s View, through the churchyard and on to Devil’s Bridge. The display of Daffodils by St. Mary’s, and other flower strewn churchyards I’ve seen since, have had me digging out Francesca Greenoak’s book ‘God’s Acre’ which is about the flora and fauna likely to be found in a British churchyard, and, in turn, the title of that book put me in mind of the 10,000 Maniacs song ‘Lilydale’.

Come as we go far away
From the noise of the street
Walk a path so narrow
To a place where we feel at ease

Strange how my mind works: I haven’t listened to that album, ‘Songs from the Wishing Chair’, for years, but, at one time, I listened to it so frequently that I seem to be able to play it mentally on demand on some kind of internal radio.

Meanwhile…

April’s milage keeps me on course for my arbitrary 1000 mile target for the year. Once again, I didn’t match the early enthusiasm of January or February, despite the lighter evenings, but a couple of bouts of illness go some way to account for that. Not to worry, as of today I’ve clocked just over 450 miles so far, so I’m still ahead of schedule.

Right – off to find ‘Songs from the Wishing Chair’, time to get reacquainted with an old favourite.

Parts of the church are very ancient – at some point I shall actually get around to looking inside. I’m aiming for 1000 miles, but when I realised that I was well ahead on that target, I did wonder whether I could stretch to 2018km instead. I’ve kept quiet about that however, because I’m not sure that I will make it. Keep it under your hat!

That 10000 Maniacs album was a bit of an obsession a long long time ago. I’ve had the tunes in my head since I wrote the post. Well, I did until a couple of days ago when I listened to some Slovenly, another old obsession – now I have those tunes on internal rotation.